About

With experience in the public sector as legal counsel at the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Industry and Commerce (where he participated in negotiating the foreign investment chapter of the US-Andean FTA), and briefly in private practice at Gómez Pinzón Abogados (today Gómez Pinzón & Zuleta), Nicolás Ramírez is building an in-house career of note in the energy sector. From a position as legal counsel to Bioenergy SA on its establishment of an ethanol project, he moved to oil & gas service sector company M-I SWACO as legal and contracts manager for South America–North (covering Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Trinidad & Tobago). The company’s merger into Smith International in 2010 saw it become part of Schlumberger, and in 2012 Ramírez was appointed the group’s legal counsel for Ecuador. One of his first moves was to increase the participation of non-legal specialists in his department’s advisory function so as to be able to provide more complete and business-ready advice. He has also implemented initiatives to overturn his internal clients’ perception of legal requirements as a hindrance to business, in part by devising innovative and creative solutions. ‘Surprising top management with positive and novel resolutions can be satisfying’, he says. He regards having had to assume responsibility for difficult issues in jurisdictions where he has had limited knowledge of the country’s legal functioning as his greatest challenge to date, and draws satisfaction in confirming that ‘the application of basic principles and common sense, in conjunction with the correct accompaniment by local firms, has always permitted me to achieve a positive outcome from these experiences’.